| *''Japanese'': [[渋川|澁川]] 春海 ''(Shibukawa Harumi, Shibukawa Shunkai)'' | | *''Japanese'': [[渋川|澁川]] 春海 ''(Shibukawa Harumi, Shibukawa Shunkai)'' |
| He was born into a family of go-players to the shogunate, but was also interested in mathematics and astronomy. At that time Japan was still calculating the calendar using the Tang calendar the Senmyô calendar 宣明暦, which it had adopted in 8612, and inaccuracies in the calendar were obvious, especially that the winter solstice was calculated almost two days late. Also, it was not very accurate with eclipses, in particular predicted far too many. Harumi like some other scholars of the time believed that the Mongol-period Juji calendar授時暦, which was the apex of the Chinese calendar tradition,should be adopted in Japan. Through his professional connections as a go-player he was able to interest several officials in the project, especially [[Hoshina Masanori]] 保科正之 of Aizu, the shogun's guardian, and Mito Mitsukuni. He made a table of eclipses as predicted by the Senmyô and Juji calendars to prove the superiority of the later. However, on 1675/5/1 an eclipse that was predicted by the Senmyô calendar but not by the Juji calendar did occur, and so the idea of changing calendars was rejected. | | He was born into a family of go-players to the shogunate, but was also interested in mathematics and astronomy. At that time Japan was still calculating the calendar using the Tang calendar the Senmyô calendar 宣明暦, which it had adopted in 8612, and inaccuracies in the calendar were obvious, especially that the winter solstice was calculated almost two days late. Also, it was not very accurate with eclipses, in particular predicted far too many. Harumi like some other scholars of the time believed that the Mongol-period Juji calendar授時暦, which was the apex of the Chinese calendar tradition,should be adopted in Japan. Through his professional connections as a go-player he was able to interest several officials in the project, especially [[Hoshina Masanori]] 保科正之 of Aizu, the shogun's guardian, and Mito Mitsukuni. He made a table of eclipses as predicted by the Senmyô and Juji calendars to prove the superiority of the later. However, on 1675/5/1 an eclipse that was predicted by the Senmyô calendar but not by the Juji calendar did occur, and so the idea of changing calendars was rejected. |